Thanks to Sporting Kansas City’s 2-1 win over the Houston Dynamo in the second leg of the Eastern Conference Championship on Saturday night – and the capacity crowd that endured sub-freezing temperatures to see it through – Sporting Park is finally set to host its biggest event yet.
SKC’s sparkling stadium on the plains will serve as the site of the MLS Cup final on Dec. 7, when the hosts take on the winner of the Western Conference Championship on Sunday night between the Portland Timbers and Real Salt Lake.
Tickets for the MLS Cup final will begin to go on sale next week. According to the club, Sporting KC season-ticket members that purchased the playoff package in the first week of October can secure their seat(s) through the Sporting KC Account Manager on Ticketmaster.com. For all other season ticket members, an exclusive pre-sale will begin at 1 pm ET/noon pm CT on Tuesday, November 26, and end at 3 pm ET/2 pm CT on Wednesday, November 27.
Tickets for the general public, while supplies last, will go on sale at 11 am ET/10 am CT on Monday, Dec. 2.
This year will mark the first time that Kansas City will serve as the host city for the MLS Cup final, dating all the way back to the team’s early days as the Kansas City Wiz when the league was founded in 1996.
Opened in June 2011, Sporting Park hosted the MLS All-Star Game earlier this year in July and hosted its second Eastern Conference Championship on Saturday night, when Dom Dwyer’s second-half goal lifted Kansas City to the franchise’s first MLS Cup appearance since 2004. Sporting Kansas City lost their last shot at clinching an MLS Cup berth there in 2011 in a 2-0 loss to the Dynamo.
Sporting Kansas City won the US Open Cup title there in 2012, and the stadium has also hosted three games for the US national team, most recently when hometown hero Graham Zusi scored the game-winning goal for the US in a 2-0 World Cup qualifying win over Jamaica on Oct. 11.
Sporting Park also hosted a World Cup qualifying group stage game between the US and Guatemala in October 2012, and a Gold Cup group stage game between the US and Martinique in June 2011.
The MLS Cup final now returns to the Midwest for the first time since 2001, when Columbus Crew Stadium hosted the San Jose Earthquakes’ 2-1 win over the LA Galaxy.
Come December 7, Sporting Park will become the first stadium to host the MLS All-Star Game, a USMNT match, and the MLS Cup in the same calendar year.
